Sunday, February 4, 2018

Authors beware if you get this email

It
has recently come to my attention that there's a book blogger out there
offering paid reviews, increased sales and visibility. I'm pointing
this out because I think it could be a scam or at the very least,
unethical.

A little while ago,
I was contacted by one of the authors I review for. In her message to
me she asked what I thought of her being contacted by a blogger who
said she had seen her work and wanted to "work with her". This got me
instantly suspicious because as a blogger and reviewer, I have never
contacted an author saying I'd like to "work with them". Review their
book, yes. Work with them, no. What does that even mean?

The author I was chatting with provided me with her name and between
the two of us, we started digging. We found a
post by someone on Facebook talking about it. An extensive
discussion in another
thread. And a blog
post written by someone who got contacted by the blogger and
wanted to warn people. You can also check out this post
which goes into a lot of detail about her emails and communications.

Let
me just say it right here. Bloggers do not get paid to review a book.
Well, certainly not the bloggers I know and certainly not myself. I
have never asked for money from an author or publisher for reviewing a
book. The only thing I've ever been sent is the book I'm supposed to
review itself. Because, ya know, I need the book to read it in order to
be able to review it. Granted this is paying to be reviewed on her blog
website, but we all remember the scandal a few years ago when Amazon
cracked down on authors who paid for reviews. Reviews got deleted (they
still do) and authors got their reputations ruined. Paid reviews are
not on. And paid reviews are against Amazon policy. Perhaps since these
paid reviews go on her own website, that's the loophole that the paid
review falls through. While unethical, they are not illegal. But the
big point here is, if the review is paid for, is it truly honest?
Wouldn't the person who is paid feel obligated to review the book
positively regardless of how they feel abou tthe book because they were
paid?

“I
hope you do not mind me emailing you; I am emailing you because I would
love to review your work on my website. My site is a book reviewing
website which has received a great response from readers and now that I
have a loyal following who I adore, I am always on the lookout for
great books I can feature for them. I discovered your work and I loved
what I saw, so that is why I am emailing you today! Your work looks
wonderful, and you clearly are passionate; passion is a quality I love
because I am very passionate about reading so I hope we are able to
work together”.

It's
a form email and it seems to have
been sent to dozens and dozens of authors. I'm suspecting indie authors
and mostly debut authors who are not experienced about the blogging and
review world. I can't imagine the authors for The Girl With A Dragon
Tattoo and Gone Girl would have paid her for the review on the blog.

There would probably be a lot of debut authors who would
be glad for a positive review with the guarantee of increased publicity
and sales for her fee. It might not seem like a lot of money for a
review but it adds up. She's probably making a pretty penny
cumulatively. And she offers "proof" of increased sales by saying she
will show you her Amazon sales stats. Let me just say, stats can be
doctored unless they are screenshots and even then, those can be
changed if someone is skilled with Photoshop.

Upon investigating the blog, this is what we discovered:

She
has a few recent books with VERY high engagement but they are popular
mainstream titles - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl. With
a closer look, you will see that about 80% of the comments in the post
are made by her.It's kind of weird and surreal if you read through the
comments.

If
you take the time to scroll her posts, you will see that only the first
few posts have high engagement. Go back a month or two and the older
posts with reviews of unknown or debut authors (the majority of them)
tend to have zero or one or two comments. It's only the popular
mainstream titles that have high engagement. Most others don't.

The popular books got very detailed reviews - to detailed,
to the point
of being spoilery, and the lesser known books got short, run of the
mill reviews which makes you wonder if she ever read the book.

While scrolling through the blog, I found a WIDE variety of
books being reviewed. There
is no focus. Since she is being paid, I expect she's review anything
and give a positive, if lacklustre review. And I question whether she
actually reads all the books she claims to review.

Additionally,
there seems to be frequent reposting of reviews to keep them at a
current date and make it seem like there are a lot of fresh reviews,
however, if you dig deeper and look at the comments, you will see that
even though the post is dated say 18 January 2018, the comments date
back to September 2017. So there's a lot of rinse, lather, repeat, and
most of it suspicious.

Since I write a romance book blog, I
decided to check out her "romance" category of books. Aside for one
highly engaged review of a book by Cassandra Clare (I esriously doubt
Ms Clare paid her for the review!) all her other
romance book reviews are of indie books with no comments or engagement.
Honestly, I've never seen or heard of any of the books in the category
with the one exception and I know my way around romance books and
authors, even indie ones.

I've seen comments around that
say she doesn't read the books but looks through Amazon for key points
and write a generic review from it. I've also seen someone say that her
comments are probably fake and she's gotten other people or she herself
has gone on with multiple profiles to post the comments.

I
don't know what's true or what's not but if you take the time to go
through her website, read her services
list and her Terms
of Service
you will see that she charges for reviews. It's stated in the Terms of
Service. She claims her reviews are honest and all affiliate fees she
earns from book sales are donated. I'll leave it up to you to come to
your own conclusions after you've checked it all out, if you're so
inclined.

So anyway, if you receive an email worded as above,
beware. From what I've been told, she's charming and sweet and polite.
It's easy to be taken in by flattery if you are hankering for reviews
of your debut novel with promises of sales and visibilty.

Yeah, the comments seem really fake. And she also seems to have only two books with lots of comments for the reviews. Both of them are mainstream bestsellers. I doubt she was paid for those reviews. Her reviews for lesser known books are not as "good".

There are many legitimate organizations that will pay a blogger/reader to review an author's novel at anywhere from $5 - $200 per review. These reviewers provide professional unbiased opinions, and some I've seen didn't like the book.(lol) The difference is that they don't go around soliciting business from authors and/or bloggers. We go to them.(lol) I can appreciate anyone who is trying to make a living, but doing underhanded or unethical things to get noticed is just not cool. I know you brought this up via a group on Facebook, but I'm thrilled that you took it a step further by using your blog to warn those authors and other bloggers who may be unaware. It's always wonderful when bloggers can unite to make a statement. Great post!

Find me around social media

Subscribe Via Email

Search This Blog

Google+

About Me

I love all things beauty and makeup, reading and books, and also have a keen interest in cooking and food. Combined with a husband who loves wine, we write a number of blogs that align with our interests. I have two blogs: Deanna's World which focuses on all things books and beauty, and Daz In The Kitchen which is my cooking and food blog. I hope you visit and stay around.

I loved Skye Warren's Beauty series and His For Christmas and her writing is excellent but this just is too dark for me. I know it is branded as dark erotica and I thought that I would take a chance on the novella / prequel to the series...

Even though the world this book is based in consists of elves and are one of my favorite character races to read about (which was why I got excited and picked up this prequel) reading this did not make me want to run out and grab the fir...